This wondrous and timely work—featuring stunning photos—explores a crucial environmental problem that endangers the planet.
An intrepid band of scientists chases after carbon lurking beneath Arctic permafrost that threatens to destroy the world.
Teaming up with experts from the Woods Hole Research Center, science writer Scigliano and photographer Linder tell the bleak true story of Arctic regions whose permafrost has trapped deadly carbon. (“Permafrost soils are rich in carbon—the legacy of the grasslands, peatlands, and forests of past epochs, protected by freezing from microbial breakdown.”) Now, with Earth’s temperature rising, these greenhouse emissions threaten to unleash untold devastation on the planet: “As it thaws, the Arctic’s permafrost has the potential to upend the lives of people living in seaside condos in Miami, in exurban dream houses overlooking scenic wildlands in California...and in flimsy houses perched precariously on slippery hillsides in Haiti and on the floodplains of Bangladesh.” But far from being a despairing portrayal, this work celebrates some undergraduate researchers, directed by a group of experienced and knowledgeable scientists from Woods Hole, as they travel to Arctic regions to study this potential catastrophe with an enthusiasm and engagement that prove courageous and inspirational. Here, in the Arctic taiga (forests) and tundra, these researchers are depicted in their daily investigative pursuits in Scigliano’s text—written with scientists/debut authors Holmes, Natali, and Schade—and Linder’s color photographs. The young team members display such a passion and joy in their love of science and the exacting and repetitive work of gathering important information that they will capture readers’ hearts and minds through the many beautifully shot images and lucid prose that support this illuminating venture. Enhanced by sidebars that skillfully detail the lives and backgrounds of the young band and their mentors from Woods Hole, this volume is a tribute to the years of amassing compelling research into this problem that threatens to release more greenhouse emissions than humans will know what to do with. The book demonstrates the demanding activity of collecting data that is an antidote to the depression and helplessness many feel in the face of climate change. In its splendid design, well-written text, and revealing photos of the Arctic world and those who probe the impact of thawing permafrost on the climate, this book perfectly captures this critical issue and those who are meeting the challenge.
This wondrous and timely work—featuring stunning photos—explores a crucial environmental problem that endangers the planet.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68051-247-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Braided River
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A top-notch survey of the covert aviation programs conducted by the US military and intelligence agencies since WW II. Drawing on previously classified archives and other sources, aviation historian Peebles pieces together a fascinating story that begins with the XP-59A. This fixed-wing fighter with British- designed engines was America's first jet. Airframe flaws kept it out of production and combat, but the armed forces gained valuable experience in running secret projects with small teams at isolated test sites. Probably the best known of the so-called dark eagles were the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes developed by Lockheed's fabled Skunk Works. Less familiar craft also performed important if less glamorous services'': Model 147 drones (a.k.a. Lightning Bugs) did bomb-damage assessments and other reconnaissance missions in the unfriendly skies over Communist China and North Vietnam. Equally unheralded is the GNAT-750 UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), which the CIA has used to overfly Bosnia at relatively small cost. Not all clandestine aeronautical enterprises are developmental, as the author makes clear in his judicious review of the still unacknowledged pilot-training programs that have been conducted with the aid of captured MiGs. Nor, press reports and purported sightings by believers in UFOs to the contrary, is every rumored project a reality. Indeed, Peebles goes out of his way to put paid to any lingering notion that the Air Force has funded or even contemplated a hypersonic flying wing code-named Aurora. He then segues gracefully into an assessment of the socioeconomic credits and debits that accrue from putting strategic weapons systems under security wraps for prolonged periods. An informed and informative overviewcomplete with anecdotal detail on the venturesome souls who participatedof the undercover activities that have given America air superiority over friends and foes alike. (35 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-89141-535-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Presidio/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
A disappointingly flat collection of musings on engineering history. Petroski's concern, as in previous works such as The Pencil (1990), is the interdependence of engineering and society—the role of engineers in shaping the world we live in, but also the fact that engineering's achievements are driven not purely by technology but by economics, politics, and culture. But in demonstrating these truths through chronicles of great engineered projects and portraits of interesting engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, he largely leaves out the ingredient that would really enlighten the reader—the engineering itself. ``The tapering at the top of the building demanded some especially tricky structural engineering,'' Petroski hints, with regard to Malaysia's Petronas Twin Towers, the world's tallest. But he leaves it at that, satisfied to provide a sketchy account of the building's materials and facilities, and a slight chronology of the project. Similarly, ``improvements in tunneling, such as the chore of getting rid of the soil,'' would seem to be a main topic in the history of the Channel Tunnel, but that phrase appears merely as a transition in Petroski's lifeless parade of 19th-century tunnel plans. Without using his tantalizing examples—pioneering soil mechanicist Karl Terzaghi and the rise and decline of the transatlantic steamship—to explain any engineering principles, they remain little more than aimless encyclopedia entries. Perhaps this is because they were written for a scientifically oriented audience (most appeared in American Scientist), with the intention of highlighting the historical and social context. Still, only occasionally, as in a chapter using the various uses of wireless communication to illustrate the unpredictable evolution of technology, do they seem to ascend above the assembled facts to a salient idea. Petroski is a little petulant about the respect engineering gets (as from the executors of Alfred Nobel's bequest), but he's squandered an opportunity to propagate a real sense of the science and labor of builders and inventors. (22 illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Dec. 17, 1997
ISBN: 0-375-40041-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1997
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